


Hallowed Ground

by floraltohru



Category: Fruits Basket, Fruits Basket (Anime 2019), Fruits Basket - Takaya Natsuki (Manga)
Genre: Also Yuki Sohma loves his wife even though she does not appear, Domestic Fluff, F/M, House Cleaning, I love Yuki Sohma's wife too don't @ me, Nostalgia, Spoilers for Fruits Basket Another
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:35:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24312142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floraltohru/pseuds/floraltohru
Summary: Yuki, Kyo, and Tohru prepare Shigure's house for some new tenants.--Eerily, the house looks almost exactly the same. Frozen in the forest as though suspended in amber, a perfect rendition of so many of Tohru’s fondest memories. The little pond out front has dried up and there’s no laundry swinging from the lines, but everything else is just as she recalled - except, maybe smaller. A little more unkempt.Her calves burn from walking up the stairs - were there always so many stairs?
Relationships: Honda Tohru/Sohma Kyou
Comments: 21
Kudos: 121





	Hallowed Ground

Eerily, the house looks almost exactly the same. Frozen in the forest as though suspended in amber, a perfect rendition of so many of Tohru’s fondest memories. The little pond out front has dried up and there’s no laundry swinging from the lines, but everything else is just as she recalled - except, maybe smaller. A little more unkempt.

Her calves _burn_ from walking up the stairs - were there always so many stairs? 

“Am I that out of shape?” Yuki asks, bent at the waist and breathing heavily. 

“Probably,” Kyo says, and Tohru is irritated to note that he hasn’t broken a sweat. Hajime falls in step behind him, following his father to the door while she and Yuki catch their breath. 

“You walked these every day?” Tohru turns to find Mutsuki taking the last of the stairs two at a time, his gray hair peeking over the top of a box of cleaning supplies. 

“Of course,” Yuki tells him. 

“I don’t believe you.” 

Yuki smiles, chipper. “Tohru, can I interest you in a fourth child?” 

“Absolutely not,” Kyo says without looking back. He’s still fumbling around with his keyring, trying to find the right one with the occasional suggestion from his eldest. 

Tohru ruffles Mutsuki’s hair. “I think I’m content with the three we have, thank you though.” 

“Looks like you’re stuck with me.” Mutsuki matches Yuki’s smile with one of his own, jostling his shoulder as he moves past him to the house. 

“Little shit,” Yuki says fondly. He’s wearing that look again, the one that’s usually reserved for stargazing and board game nights and his wife. It melts Tohru’s heart like Valentine’s chocolate in the sun. 

“He takes after both of his uncles, doesn’t he?” 

“Unfortunately.” But the way Yuki says it, Tohru has a sneaking suspicion that he doesn’t find it unfortunate at all. 

Kyo finally manages to find the right key, but he and Hajime both have to pull to get the door open once it’s unlocked. 

It feels wrong to walk inside the house with shoes on, but there’s no use in removing them before the floors are clean. Empty now, even the acoustics of the house have changed; it’s strange to hear five sets of heavy footsteps echo as they make their way over the threshold one by one. 

“Was it always this dusty?” Yuki asks, coughing into his sleeve. 

“Who are you kidding? Tohru ran a tight ship,” Kyo says. He trudges through a thin layer of dust to the kitchen, where he struggles with the window, jostling it open at last to welcome in the breeze. 

“You’d think the family would’ve bothered to send someone out for upkeep,” Yuki says, voice thick with another suppressed cough. 

Tohru’s tight ship is looking more like a shipwreck now, cobwebs caressing the corners of the rooms, a grimy film settled over every flat surface. 

Looking at her face now, Yuki thinks she might be making an expression identical to the one she wore when Shigure threw open the door to the kitchen - _the toxic jungle_ \- for the first time when she moved in. 

Except for the crow's feet. Those are new. 

“Where should we start?” Hajime asks her, and he’s always taken after Kyo but his resemblance to his mother is uncanny as he surveys the mess. 

“Why don’t you two start with the bedrooms?” she suggests. 

Hajime nods dutifully and pulls Mutsuki up the stairs by the sleeve of his sweater, broom in tow. “I’m perfectly capable of getting upstairs myself, _Dad_ ,” Mutsuki protests. Hajime’s reply is muffled, but Tohru can tell the two are still verbally sparring as they start airing out the rooms. Unlike their predecessors, she’s fairly confident their bickering won’t inflict any new structural damage. 

Upon further inspection, Kyo declares that the doors will need to be replaced. After being broken down and pieced back together so many times, they wobble a bit on their frames. Tohru remembers bundling up in sweaters to fend off the chill where the doors let winter air in through the cracks. She runs a hand over the thinning paper, breathing out a soft sigh when she comes across Kagura’s patchwork animal shapes, still there after all this time. 

For a moment, Shigure’s oft-repeated plea echoes through the living room. “Why must everyone destroy my house?” he’d lamented. 

Something familiar gnaws at Tohru’s chest. She tells herself it's the dust making her eyes water, nothing more and nothing less. 

“Couldn’t hurt to get new windows upstairs, too,” Tohru hears Kyo tell Yuki as he digs around the closet for another broom. “And make sure they know how to use the locks.” At this, he shoots a pointed look in Tohru’s direction. 

“I knew how to use the window locks,” she says with a huff. 

“And you just decided not to?” 

“To be fair, she was probably more at risk of perverts already inside the house,” Yuki says. 

“Hey!”

“Calm down, I meant Shigure.” 

And it warms Tohru’s heart that after twenty years, some things have only changed for the better. 

A deep ache has settled in Tohru’s limbs from scrubbing relentlessly at the kitchen floor, but the room is beginning to look habitable. 

Mutsuki bursts downstairs, Hajime on his heels. 

“I am starving,” he announces with a flourish. 

“Did you get the bedrooms clean already?” Tohru asks. 

“Yes!” 

“Not even close,” Hajime says. 

“Okay, so there are a couple things we still need to do,” Mutsuki amends. “But I think we deserve a break. And I’m famished.” 

“I could eat,” Kyo admits. “What do you think?” 

Yuki nods his agreement. “I wouldn’t mind stopping for dinner.” 

“I could cook something,” Tohru suggests. 

“I think the fridge is somehow less-stocked than when Shigure and I lived here.” Yuki pokes around in a few of the cabinets, but they’re long cleared-out. 

“Do you think that takoyaki place is still there?” Kyo asks. 

“I hope so.” Try as she might, Tohru hasn’t been able to find a takoyaki place as good as the one near Shigure’s house. And she’s looked. 

“We can go check!” Mutsuki offers, slinging an arm around Hajime’s shoulders. Hajime sighs, but he doesn’t duck away from the contact. 

Kyo’s “alright, but don’t cause any trouble” is met with a cheeky wink from Mutsuki and an eye roll from his own son. With Yuki’s wallet entrusted to Hajime, they tread a path down the stairs, familiar orange and grey hair disappearing as they descend. 

Tohru makes a pot of tea and the three adults sit on the engawa, staring out over the yard and planning the next stage of their renovation. The leaves will need to be raked and the weeds pulled, but soon it’ll be the yard Tohru remembers again. 

Hajime and Mutsuki are still gone when the sun begins its retreat, bathing the hillside in golden light. 

“I miss watching sunsets from the roof,” Tohru says, curling into Kyo’s side. 

“We probably couldn’t get up there if we tried,” Yuki says. “We’re old now.” 

“Speak for yourself,” Kyo scoffs.

“Please be careful.” Tohru lets out a deep sigh, watching as her husband crosses the yard. “Kyo, your knees…” 

But he scrambles up the ladder like he hasn’t aged a day. “Bastard,” Yuki says, and it’s equal parts teasing and admiration as he follows. 

Tohru casts a glance at the stairs - still no Hajime and Mutsuki to witness her bad example - and starts her ascent.

They settle in easily, and Tohru’s heart beats out a familiar cadence as she sits down between them. She grabs both of their hands, thinks of how strange it is to be sitting here watching the sky fade from pink and magenta to lavender twilight, how bizarre it is to be sitting on the roof as a wife and a mother and not a teenager. Her hands are tiny in Kyo’s and Yuki’s; smaller even than the first time she was clinging to both of them as they led her down the street, up the stairs, and back to this very house. 

_Let’s go home._

**Author's Note:**

> i never read another so don't hate on me too hard. ✌️  
> my parents recently moved and god there's so much dust.  
> i'm @floraltohru on tumblr come say hi.


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